"Embedding" Vista

So I finally had 30 minutes to mess around with Vista. I've been running it for my Media Center since it came out on MSDN and recently on my laptop. The other day I realized Nuhi (of nlite fame) is working on vLite to slim down Vista! So I decided to see if EWF will still run on Vista. Good news and bad news....

Yes, it runs but since Vista uses a new boot manager, not NTLDR, HORM propably doesn't work right now (I couldn't do much testing on that since Virtual PC doesn't allow hibernating after installing drivers). MSFT is releasing a new feature pack to XP Embedded that will include some new features (.NET 3.0, IE7, Media Player 11, etc.) but it won't actually be based on Vista unfortunately.

Even with vLite (I almost removed everything) a basic Vista Business install was over 2.5GB!! Obviously Nuhi is still working on vLite so hopefully there's lots of room for improvement. I'll also mess around with all the other versions, maybe Home will have less.

I also have 3.5KB of data that gets written on every boot up. Obviously something that is bypassing EWF or before EWF is started. I'll have to investigate that some more. The best part of Vista is the deployment options available. More on that later though...

I have a question about this. The reason we use a "lite" version of XP instead of any other operating system would be due to the compatibility with all the GPS, audio/video, internet, etc software designed primarily for Windows XP which may not have been ported to other OS. For both hardware and software, XP is generally the most compatible, and with nlite, horm, ewf, minlogon, XP is fast.

We basically want a largely decreased version for our CarPC install. Avoiding bloat will improve boot times and save on disk space. So what is the purpose of using even the slimmest Vista possible? In terms of compatibility, there is nothing that would benefit a Vista user above an XP user, at least for the moment. There are currently no Directx10 specific applications released yet, and I doubt there would be any need for them on a CarPC anyway. I can imagine the benefits of ReadyBoost and the built-in hibernation feature, but Vista is the definition of bloat. We could pay premium for a graphically intense moving wallpaper, but that is something we could already do on XP. Most of the CarPCs on this forum will have difficulty handling Vista.

SFiorito,
Do you have any additional information on this? Now that Vista SP1 is out, and Large USB drives are fairly cheap, I am considering this as an option. Did you ever find a way to make this work successfully or point me in the direction of some documentation I would appreciate that. Thanks.

I have a question about this. The reason we use a "lite" version of XP instead of any other operating system would be due to the compatibility with all the GPS, audio/video, internet, etc software designed primarily for Windows XP which may not have been ported to other OS. For both hardware and software, XP is generally the most compatible, and with nlite, horm, ewf, minlogon, XP is fast.

We basically want a largely decreased version for our CarPC install. Avoiding bloat will improve boot times and save on disk space. So what is the purpose of using even the slimmest Vista possible? In terms of compatibility, there is nothing that would benefit a Vista user above an XP user, at least for the moment. There are currently no Directx10 specific applications released yet, and I doubt there would be any need for them on a CarPC anyway. I can imagine the benefits of ReadyBoost and the built-in hibernation feature, but Vista is the definition of bloat. We could pay premium for a graphically intense moving wallpaper, but that is something we could already do on XP. Most of the CarPCs on this forum will have difficulty handling Vista.

Pretty soon Microsoft will not support XP anymore, so no more updates :-(, thats the reason im becoming interested in VISTA.